Deregulation of the airline industry has been a huge boon to flyers, the economy, and the nation

Airline Competition | The Antiplanner

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"Elliott was mainly critical of the Obama administration for not protecting air travelers by blocking these mergers, but it isn’t clear how air travelers have been harmed. The reality is that the barriers to entry in the airline industry are much smaller than in the auto or railroad industries. This means mergers are less threatening to consumers that if, say, BNSF and Union Pacific or CSX and Norfolk Southern proposed to merge.

At the time the merger movement began, the major airlines (except Southwest) were all losing money. They thought that the mergers were needed to end those losses. Maybe they were wrong, but they are all making money today. Would it have been better if some of them had simply gone out of business?

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, airfares averaged 13.1 cents per passenger mile in 2007 and 14.2 cents in 2013, the latest year available. That sounds like an increase, but after adjusting for inflation, it’s a 1.4 percent decrease. (If I had used 2008 numbers, the decrease would have been even greater.) It doesn’t sound to me like consumers have been hurt by the mergers."

The airline industry has seen natural expansion, and contraction through mergers, and failing businesses. This has benefited the flying public, the nation, and our economy more generally. There is absolutely no place for antitrust laws, they do not perform an antitrust function, they simply allow the failing model businesses to damage the winning using the power of the federal government. The place for government here is simply to stand back, allow competition, and new models to come to the fore without impediment, and protect both parties from fraud, and criminality.

If we do this, we will constantly see old models mature, become more efficient, then be usurped by new models, think Uber. The Taxi industry was a locked in, top down regulated industry, and it took decades for technology to finally unwind this mess of high costs, low quality, poor service, and political graft, and corruption. Don't allow government to return the airline industry to a similar locked up mess of high costs, low quality, poor service, and graft, and corruption. 

Barry, please leave the airline industry alone. You have done enough in Libya, Syria, the Middle East, the Near East, Iraq, the South China Sea, Europe, Russia, and China to last us a life time. Take your Destructor Victory Lap, and go home. Please.